Shadow's and Smoke
by Cougar9
Summary: One-Shot spin off from my Cougar stories How I Joined the X-Men and Now That I'm an X-Man . For any fan who was wondering what happens to Wolf. Might wanna read those first. R


Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men, or Wolf, but you can't use her cuz she'd get mad at you. I do own Cougar. If you feel the need to use her, you're weirder than me.

Author's Note: I felt bad about writing Wolf out of my first fic, so this is a little one shot (is that the right term?) about her life a few years after she meets up with the X-Men (in my fic 'Now That I'm An X-Man). You'll probably have to read that to get this one, and the earlier one (How I Joined The X-Men), to get that one. Vicious cycle, no? Anyway, I wanted a story/fic for Wolf.

Dedicated to Wolf/Nay (don't miss the irony of joining 'The Feds").

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My life is not one of hardship. It's not one of sorrow. It's not one of joys and laughter either. It just is.

I sit at the quaint little coffee shop, sipping my vanilla caramel latte and reading a book. I turn the page and my eyes skim the words. I'm not reading. I'm listening, and smelling. I'm waiting for my target. There's a small earpiece, the size of a tack head, tucked into my ear. I can hear the buzzing noise it makes, but I've grown to ignore it. Pete is on the line, though he knows better than to speak to me unnecessarily. Me and Pete go way back. Back to when the U.S. Feds first 'recruited' me.

"_You can come with us, or we can make you come," the woman explained cooly._

_I had laughed. "You think you can track me?" I'm not cocky, per say, but we were in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness where I was living was a wolf with a pack. I could summon flocks of birds, drones of mice, herds of caribou, and a passel of polar, grizzly, brown and Kodiak bears. I'm a mutant, capable of speaking with animals and shape shifting into a wolf. Pretty neat, huh?_

"_No," the woman answers me at length. "It took us quite some time to find you up here. But, we can expose your research group for using mutant help. Any research you've collected will be disregarded and you're group will lose its funding. Your people are not looked upon kindly during this time."_

_I growl. My people…She just blinks her cold blue eyes at me._

"_So I help out," I reply, "Then I getta come back here, right?" I can't believe I'm considering this…_

"_Yes."_

_I can smell her lie. I look at my feet, weigh the options and outcomes, then sigh. "All right."_

They assigned me to three missions, one under cover in a feral-mutant crime ring where I went up against the mutant superhero team, the X-Men. I'd met my childhood friend, Cougar, there. The next mission was a simple tracking one; follow the bad guy and alert the feds to his dealings, the sale of children for sex. The third mission placed me as a pampered 'wolf-dog' for a rich drug king who worked his laborers to death and killed them if they complained.

I went back to the wilds. Finished up my research. But the Feds came back, and the feeling of rescuing the victims of my last two missions compelled me to accept their offer again.

Its been two years. Tow years of combat training and espionage learning. I'm known through out The Department as only Wolf. We don't give our real names, though I'm sure they're on file somewhere. I gave Pete his name because he repeats what they tell him. He doesn't like it, so it automatically stuck. The guy was terrified of me the first few missions, but we're better now. Pete sits out in the van, relaying orders through my ear piece during missions and setting me up with all my spiffy spy gadgets. He's a mutant too. All of us Agents and our Drivers are in the Department. He has something to do with electronic fields, not too powerful, but he can fly when in a tight spot.

My missions vary. I've spoken to Cougar, of the X-Men, numerous times. She's a hero to the mutants, but it's the Department that's been taking care of everyone else. We're not so specialized. We travel all over the world. Smoke and Shadows that come and go; fix this, break that; stop them or help those people build. We're like the X-Men in some ways but unlike them in more.

We also kill.

I won't say that my record is spot free, but I decide myself if I'll be the executioner or simply the one who leads another to them.

My target today is a peon of the leader in another child sex ring. He buys his boss an expresso from this shop everyday. I get to follow him. Nothing glamorous, a trot through the Brazilian jungles is all. The rescuing of children from a hell.

I feel I'm doing my part.

"Look up when the bell chimes." Pete tells me.

The bell chimes, I glance up, then back down. I turn the page, look at my wrist watch and feign surprise. Stuffing the book back into my back pack, I gather up y jacket, bag and empty coffee cup. Scurring out the door, I bump into the man who'd just walked in.

"Desculpe," I excuse myself. I've always wanted to speak another language. Thanks to telepaths, I'm now fluent in 17. I leave the coffee shop with his scent and slip down a dark, dirty ally.

"He's leaving the shot," Pete relays, "Are you ready?"

"I got the scent, just gimme a minute," I snap at him. Impatient Fed… "Pick up my bag in a couple minutes," I order.

Over the ear piece I hear him mutter, "Gross," like he always does when he can hear me shift.

I shake my lupine self out. Though I'm most certainly a wolf, humans generally wave me off as some German Sheppard mix. They don't want to believe that wolves walk their city streets. There are much worse things.

I emerge from the ally, glance at the van that Pete's sitting in--

"Hi Big Bad," he acknowledges me

--and trot over to the front of the coffee shop, my nose to the ground. I waver in front of the door--just a big dog looking for scraps-- and pick out the peon's scent. I start to follow it.

Tonight I'll lead fifty federal U.S and Brazilian specially trained agents into a very bad guy's child brothel after I hang around a bit, picking up evidence with my microphone ear piece and the camera on my raggedy collar.

This is my job. This is my life.


End file.
